Apartments and ME!! It's ALL about me!

[Bestatte]

If these rooms were all located in public places with soldiers and/or guards wandering around 24/7, how exactly would a burglar learn to pick a lock?

I think the implications of having rooms -that- highly protected would render the lockpicking skill relatively useless. Remember you can't pick open the good stuff til you learn to pick open the crap. If the crap is accessable only through renting from an innkeeper, that lockpicker will never learn to pick. Except maybe his nose.

[Graydread]

Love Rindan's idea. Surely a city like Allanak, with a thriving economy based on trade, and therefore a large number of visitors, would have rooms available at both the Gaj and the Bard. (If not the Traders as well - perhaps a very small number of exclusive rooms there.) IMHO the Gaj wouldn't have much in terms of security, while the Bard might be considerably better, but also more expensive (you gets what you pays for!).

Oh, and the opportunity to PC an inkeep or bartender.... brilliant! Special Ap it, and you could have RP'd competition between Inns: competing menus and prices, entertainment, rooms, plots, supplies, jobs, etc. etc. etc. It would add a whole new layer of colour and drama to Zalanthats.  

Make this my Christmas wish!

[Rhyden]

Rindan's suggestion is awesome.

As for the lockpicking? That may be a problem for some of our class/subguild skill-options, but realistically, it's the job of the guards to reduce chances for no-good thieves and burglars to gain illegal entry. Then again, with this ideal apartment-business, who knows? Perhaps a lock-picking guild could be created within one of the apartments? Perhaps outside of. Whatever the means, I'm sure the common filth of both cities will manage to steal whatever they desire, apartment idea or not.

[Nenyuki Agent]

I really like the idea of keeping Agents solely for upscale apartments/houses. Lemme tell you, renting the hovels is a pain in the ass. Not only do you have to find someone seedy enough to wanna rent it but then you have to maintain contact with that person in order to collect your rent, you must clean out the place after they croak which leads to all kinds of potentially lethal findings, squatters or occurences and etc etc etc.

This isn't a new idea, Nenyuk is ever changing and I hope for the sake of my character that it won't evolve to the point of PC extintion.

Patience, my little kiddies, good places to live come to all those who wait.

[HardCarbon]

I really like the idea of keeping Agents solely for upscale apartments/houses. Lemme tell you, renting the hovels is a pain in the ass. Not only do you have to find someone seedy enough to wanna rent it but then you have to maintain contact with that person in order to collect your rent, you must clean out the place after they croak which leads to all kinds of potentially lethal findings, squatters or occurences and etc etc etc.

This isn't a new idea, Nenyuk is ever changing and I hope for the sake of my character that it won't evolve to the point of PC extintion.

Patience, my little kiddies, good places to live come to all those who wait.

 If we survive long enough!!!  :lol:        FINALLY have a place to call home.. WHEEEEE

[Raesanos]

This just screams twinky at me, it would jar me out of the game. I like to get immersed in the world. And with uber-twink commands like this i feel i would be drawn out of it.

Can you please explain why this is twinky?  Twinky means abusing code, metagaming, or powergaming.  How is interacting with a scripted NPC any of those things?

You get some appartment doorman that reminds you an hour before your time in the room is up via the way.

The current code does have reminders for when your time is running out, its just handled differently.

They have different sayings everytime you rent a room

Do you mean, just random circulation through sayings like "Thanks, enjoy" and "Thank you, have fun" and "Okay, enjoy your room" etc.?

A lot of things that were said

You guys remember that you can rent the back rooms of most taverns, right?  That doesn't seem to help keep the lovebirds off the balcony, so to speak.  I think that using this script to replace that functionality would be pretty silly, though we have considered semi-permanent inn rooms and are not sure if we're going to go down that road.  Without getting into the details, it certainly has both advantages and disadvantages.

[Moofassa]

Well, to be pure, it's not twinkish. I just like to see as many things done as possible, through PC's. I liked the idea of PC innkeeps and bartenders, so much fun good be had.

Not twinkish, Rae, just... jarring.. and another command that takes me out of my character, and into a bunch of number entering OOC code.

[Rhyden]

Moofassa, let's start our own tavern.

[Rindan]

If these rooms were all located in public places with soldiers and/or guards wandering around 24/7, how exactly would a burglar learn to pick a lock?

I think the implications of having rooms -that- highly protected would render the lock picking skill relatively useless. Remember you can't pick open the good stuff til you learn to pick open the crap. If the crap is accessible only through renting from an innkeeper, that lock picker will never learn to pick. Except maybe his nose.

I doesn't have to be highly protected, just protected enough so that one thief can't go and open up every single door in an hour and clean out a building.  With a little scripting I think you could make the whole lock picking ordeal fair for all parties involved.  

Set it up like this:  You have a hallway a few rooms long of inn rooms.  Patrolling this hallway is a guard.  If at any point you are picking a doorway and the guard can see you, you are caught and he promptly calls for help and cuts you down.  Now, this would be easy enough for a lock picker to circumvent by liberal use of the watch and look commands, so just drop the light level in the hallway such that you can't see into the next 'room' of the hallway.  If it is a dark and seedy inn that you might expect in a place like the Gaj, it isn't all that hard to believe that there might be no windows and that torches are used only sparingly.  If you are a smart lock picker, you will get a friend and have him keep watch while you work.

To increase the difficulty a little more, make it so that all rooms that are not occupied by PCs have NPC tenets in them that will holler and alert if you pick into their room.  So, if you just go randomly pick into an inn room, you stand a fair chance of getting caught by an NPC resident.  If on the other hand you have a mark and somehow find out what room he is staying in and get a friend to keep watch, you stand a much better chance of getting away with something.

I am not saying that this is THE solution, but just pointing out that there are solutions.  The biggest problem is that the more elaborate the solution, the pain some coder has to go through to execute it.  Personally, I think any sort of inn system would be better then nothing.  There are other locks in the game that don't require breaking into a house or an inn room, and as it stands it isn't like there is a particularly thriving home theft industry.  

Most home owners in the game either realize that their property is utterly defenseless and so leave nothing of value in them, or they are rich enough to buy a house with some defenses.  The only people who are going to gain anything from inn rooms are going to be people with defenseless property with nothing of value in them.  If those people get a place to sleep and store a spare set of clothing in, I don't think it is going to hurt burglars any.  Hell, if chests with locks were more predominate, it might actually help them.  There are plenty of ways into an inn room that doesn't involve a pair of lock picks, but all of those ways are useless if the loot is sitting in a locked chest.

Whatever the case, even if impenetrable or completely inn rooms were implemented, I think it would be a net improvement even if it caused some harm to a single class.  Fewer homeless hobos and less sex on the Barrel's Balcony are all good things in my opinion.

[Rhyden]

Well, to be pure, it's not twinkish. I just like to see as many things done as possible, through PC's. I liked the idea of PC innkeeps and bartenders, so much fun good be had.

Not twinkish, Rae, just... jarring.. and another command that takes me out of my character, and into a bunch of number entering OOC code.

I think there needs to be a tavern a lot like 'Cheers'. Whenever you walk in, everybody knows your name.  :wink:

[Another Nenyuk]

I think there needs to be a tavern a lot like 'Cheers'. Whenever you walk in, everybody knows your name.  :wink:

Nah... people would complain that it's twinkish.  :twisted:

OK, an opinion from another of the Nenyuk PCs - my PC is in Tuluk, for anyone who cares, but I've also looked over the situation (IC and OOC) in Allanak as well. I'm in favor of the majority of the routine slums being handled by an automated script, once the bugs are worked out. Why? Because there's only so much any of us can do, and we're WAY outnumbered. Particularly in Allanak, where there are a TON of apartments (last time I was in 'Nak, most of them were still there - just not used) that rent for very small amounts of money. This will free up the fairly small Nenyuk PC population (it's a VERY difficult role, despite how rewarding it is - we go through a LOT of agents) to concentrate on the more upscale buildings, as well as actually get some RP plots of our own going.

The biggest problems I see with this are some very considerable difficulties implementing it (many of which have been addressed already in the existing scripts), and the high possibility of twinkery. For now, I am watching carefully and waiting to see how things play out. And renting apartments to a whole lot of you. Thank you all for making me filthy rich.  

[Raesanos]

As the developer of the apartment script, I hope no one minds that I jump in to solicit feedback constantly.

The biggest problems I see with this are some very considerable difficulties implementing it (many of which have been addressed already in the existing scripts),

All issues that were on my to-do list have been dealt with.  If you see any remaining issues that I might not be aware of, drop me an email.

and the high possibility of twinkery.

What do you see as the biggest area for risk of twinkery here?  I haven't seen much abuse (only a few things loosely related to the script) and would like to know of it if I'm just in the dark.